The League of American Bicyclist designated
Baton Rouge as a Bicycle Friendly Community (Bronze Level) that made
noticeable achievements in the following categories: engineering,
education, encouragement, enforcement, and evaluation planning. The
Bronze designation is just the beginning to an exciting future for
bicycling in Baton Rouge.

After each Census block group is assessed and
mapped with ancillary spatial data, a color gradient is applied to
provide easy visual interpretation. The color green represents the most
desirable and bikeable areas, and red represents the least desirable;
giving the user a relative representation of the quality of the bicycle
environment. The areas that are most desirable have a higher
concentration of the core factors (bicycle facilities, street
connectivity, and residential density).

In addition to the bikeability index, an
extensive amount of spatial data is available, including bike-friendly
amenities and destinations. BikeBR allows the user to select unique
layers of interests specific to their needs. The user may easily “drag
and drop” a point of origin and up to nine (9) destination points.
BikeBR will also highlight the preferred route using the most
bicycle-friendly route available in blue. We leveraged freely available
technologies of Google Maps and Directions APIs to display all spatial
data.

The City-Parish Planning Commission (CPPC) created an online
interactive mapping tool called “BikeBR” to help determine which areas
in Baton Rouge are easily accessible by bicycle. A “bikeability index”
was developed to measure how safe, easy, and desirable it is to bike
instead of driving on the City-Parish’s road network based on
assessments of the physical and built environment. BikeBR is an
interactive component of our Bicycle/Pedestrian Initiative’s primary
goal to encourage you to bike on our streets.

1) Bicycle
Facilities = measured as the ratio of sums in lengths(meters) of
bike paths, trails, lanes and shared use to total land area per Census
block group. Availability of bike facilities is usually the highest
factor in promoting bike activities and is perceived as “safe” from
motorists.

2) Street
Connectivity = measured based on density of intersections
identified from street centerline data per Census block group, and
represented as a ratio of the number of true intersection (more than 3
leg segments) over land area (square meters). A higher density of
intersections represents more potential for different route choices
available at each intersection.

3) Residential
Density = measured by dividing the number of household units by
the sum of land area categorized a “residential” per Census block group.
Higher residential density is usually synergistic to ease of travel on
routes with lower speed limits and other traffic calming measures.

There have been several attempts to create
models to assess bicycle compatibility with the built environment; and existing models rate bicycle routes for suitability,
comfort, and safety. The variables were extracted from
surveys that were prepared and distributed to the local bicycling
community, of which we received 132 responses. Some of the neighborhood
characteristics that were assessed in the survey were biking facilities
(bike paths, bike lanes, bike racks); streets (number of lanes,
crosswalks, width of streets, buffers, connectivity, street conditions);
urban design (trees, lighting); and land use (community/office, public,
industrial, residential). These variables were then classified to
factors based on common variance. The top three (3) factors were bicycle
facilities, street connectivity, and residential density.